Cool science stuff

Liftoff apparently flawless.

 

Nominal.

 

Not sure why this happens, but I often see science-y stuff I want to post here -- but then don't get around to actually doing it for weeks.

So here is the first of a number of recent items I found interesting/cool.

Neutrinos are among the strangest and most exotic particles in the universe. They are almost impossible to detect because they are almost massless, have no charge and they pass right through ordinary matter. Physicists and cosmologists are very interested in neutrinos because they could provide clues to things like dark matter and the time just after the Big Bang, but it's hard to study something you can barely even tell is there in the first place.

So this story is kind of a big deal -- neutrinos were detected during a test run of the Large Hadron Collider, the first time neutrinos have been found in a particle accelerator, potentially giving scientists the opportunity to take a closer look at what some call "ghost particles."

https://www.livescience.com/ghost-particles-spotted-inside-lhc

CERN collider detects neutrino for the first time

 

This one is pretty awesome -- probably should have led with it.

So a few years ago, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft designed to study the sun, orbiting closer and closer to give it a good look -- so close, in fact, that it would actually enter the sun's atmosphere.

Last month, NASA announced the probe had done just that, first "touching the sun" in April.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-probe-video-touched-the-sun

Not only that, but NASA and Johns Hopkins also released an astounding video of images taken by the Parker probe, showing streams of energized particles in the corona, with the Milky Way visible in the background.

 

The thermal engineering and temperature management of the Parker Solar Probe is amazing. And part of the design includes its trajectories - it takes passes at running up close to the sun, then flying away to basically cool the hell off. Then it takes another run, even closer.

 

Think the laws of physics are etched in stone?



Well, maybe.

https://futurism.com/laws-physics-changing

 

This one's from November. Oops.

Archaeologists in Egypt are excavating and restoring an ancient road connecting the famous temples of Luxor and Karnak, lined with more than a thousand statues of sphinxes and rams. While the project is still ongoing -- and in fact has a long way to go, since just 309 of the statues have been uncovered -- the Egyptian government held a sort of grand re-opening ceremony and parade on the "Avenue of Sphinxes."

Egypt reopens ancient "Avenue of Sphinxes" centuries after it hosted parades for the gods - CBS News

 

Physics has gotten us to the moon and sent probes to other planets as well as Pluto. I wouldn't throw Newton under the bus quite yet.

 

Pluto IS a planet!!!

 

Man changed that. Not the universe.

 

Well, that story isn't exactly throwing Newton under the bus. Basically, it's saying the rules that work now haven't necessarily been the rules all along. The idea is that the system evolves slowly over time until it finds stability, resulting in basic laws that it follows. The implication, of course, is if that system has evolved it is likely still evolving -- but that evolution would be a VERY slow process.

 

In re-entry news, an out-of-control Russian rocket landed in the Pacific Ocean:

https://www.cnet.com/news/a-big-fai...t-came-crashing-back-to-earth-out-of-control/

But a meteor did explode over Western Pennsylvania last weekend:

Report: The exploding meteor over Pittsburgh produced blast equal to 30 tons of TNT